I will neither praise nor criticize the many arduino design points (hardware and software, of which some seem valid to me and some silly) being brought up in this post, but rather just celebrate the vast popularity of the arduino platform and the huge membership of this forum, even consisting of some members that think they got it all wrong.

If I was to add to the critic list, I would be tempted to add:

Auto-reset circuit that has had many revisions and cannot be defeated with an easy switch or jumper clip selection.

Auto-voltage selection circuit that is complex, forces the priory selection if both voltage sources are available. Should have been a simple jumper clip like an early arduino board had.

Latest rev 3 uno and mega boards that use pin 13 led opamp driver/buffer that has a floating input pin condition allowing the led to randomly be on or off if not forced low by a pin 13 output mode and digital output LOW commands.

I will neither praise nor criticize the many arduino design points (hardware and software, of which some seem valid to me and some silly) being brought up in this post, but rather just celebrate the vast popularity of the arduino platform and the huge membership of this forum, even consisting of some members that think they got it all wrong.

It's just like Windows. Just because everyone uses it, doesn't make it good.

I will neither praise nor criticize the many arduino design points (hardware and software, of which some seem valid to me and some silly) being brought up in this post, but rather just celebrate the vast popularity of the arduino platform and the huge membership of this forum, even consisting of some members that think they got it all wrong.

It's just like Windows. Just because everyone uses it, doesn't make it good.

Yea, many seem to hate all oil companies but still buy their gasoline.

Disclaimer, retired oil company employee. Great job, great company, some great supervisors, some piss poor ones also.

Yes, very good, but the design is good enough that they are selling tens of thousands. The good points are that it is aimed at the beginner market, the shields are a useful add-on, and it was an excellent decision to use the open-source g++ compiler.

Compare that to other boards where you have to buy their own (dodgy) compilers, or get a cut-down "beginner" version, and put up with an IDE that is so complex it's almost impossible to get a project up quickly.

Please post technical questions on the forum, not by personal message. Thanks!

Yes, very good, but the design is good enough that they are selling tens of thousands. The good points are that it is aimed at the beginner market, the shields are a useful add-on, and it was an excellent decision to use the open-source g++ compiler.

Compare that to other boards where you have to buy their own (dodgy) compilers, or get a cut-down "beginner" version, and put up with an IDE that is so complex it's almost impossible to get a project up quickly.

Yeah I figure, maybe they weren't the best programmers or engineers but they did create the best, most successful beginner development board and IDE so there's something to be said about that.

@majenko and Krupski All the above gripes have been posted many times, some even by me. I don't understand many of the design decisions made by Arduino either but the often dubious "features" haven't stopped it becoming a success.

As someone who has never had such a runaway success despite spending a lifetime trying to produce good hardware and software design I find it quite discouraging and another case of both marketing over function and being in the right place at the right time with the right product. Also the fact that most users don't give a rodent's posterior as long as they can get a LED to blink in time with the music

I think it's fair to say that the Arduino is designed for and marketed towards people who don't know any better. Obviously there are people here who can see ways to improve the development environment, runtime library (and its documentation) and the hardware. (No matter how good it was, that would always be the case.) But these are not the people that Arduino targets.

I only provide help via the forum - please do not contact me for private consultancy.

Yes, very good, but the design is good enough that they are selling tens of thousands. The good points are that it is aimed at the beginner market, the shields are a useful add-on, and it was an excellent decision to use the open-source g++ compiler.

Compare that to other boards where you have to buy their own (dodgy) compilers, or get a cut-down "beginner" version, and put up with an IDE that is so complex it's almost impossible to get a project up quickly.

I'm not saying Arduino is "bad", I just have gripes about the design. The ONLY reason I use Arduino is because of the great GCC support.

The boards, at the very least, should have usable mounting holes. People actually do build REAL projects with Arduino boards and it's ridiculous to either need special plastic standoffs or double sided foam tape to mount the board!

And, the Atmel AVR line certainly isn't the best choice for a microcontroller, but it's good enough for most uses.

I personally prefer the "Motorola" style (von Neumann) CPU architecture. The Harvard / Intel / AVR style architecture is a nightmare to work with. Thankfully, the C libraries shield me from most of that grief...